How to set up the perfect remote camera site to document wildlife

Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project Team Lead Sophie Mazowita shares best tips and practices for documenting wildlife with a remote camera trap. This video covers what to pack, how to pick your site, on-the-ground scouting, camera placement, frame elements, recording field data, navigation to your site, and viewing captured images. This video is a supplement to the written protocols and species-specific instructions available at conservationnw.org/wildlife-monitoring.

With partners including Wilderness Awareness School and an advisory board of state, federal and independent scientsts, Conservation Northwest leads the Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project, organizing community-scientist volunteers to monitor and document wildlife using remote cameras where state and federal agencies don’t have the resources to go. We harness the power of more than 100 volunteers each year to maintain dozens of remote camera sites in Washington and southern British Columbia, as well as to conduct winter snow tracking in the Interstate 90 corridor near Snoqualmie Pass to inform wildlife crossing projects.

Video produced by Sophie Mazowita, Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project Team Lead, with direction from Laurel Baum, Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project coordinator. Thank you!